You heard that right.  Well, maybe it’s better to say you WILL be able to hear us right!  DYS is going to bring you a weekly podshow that you can get right through your RSS subscription and here at the site.  We’ve designed the show to make DYS an even more valuable resource tool for all of our readers.

Your hosts will be Gavingarrett, the Tauren Hunter, and Moneybagguns, the shameless capitalist Gnome Mage.  Every Friday, these two toons lay aside their differences (and try not to think about honorable kills) for a while and meet in their studio overlooking Booty Bay.  (We have a bruiser posted right outside the door to make sure things don’t go too badly).

Every Monday we’ll give you a chance to ask questions that we will answer during the podcast.  Then each Friday you can Get the answers straight from Gavin and Moneybagguns!

Gavin knows the game inside and out, and his alter ego from the game is ready to fill you in on how he completely Dominates every aspect of game play.  Moneybagguns (aka Lawbringer’s evil AH market mage) has agreed to let you in on his secrets to WoW wealth.

In their studio, under the hot Stranglethorn Vale sun (and no air conditioning we might add) they take their spots in front of the golden DYS mike and get in depth with your questions.

The DYS podcast will even bring you special guests.  We’ll find the latest breaking news and tidbits to keep you ahead of everyone else so you can truly Dominate.  Our two experts will be able to help you take your game to a completely new level.

The podcast will air every Friday once they’ve had a chance to review your questions.  Now, we can’t promise they will answer every single one, but they have assured us that they will do their very best to give everyone a chance to get their comments on the show.  You simply cannot get coverage this complete (or fun) anywhere else on the web.

Since this IS Monday, you might as well get started right away.  Post your questions below and we’ll send them to our hosts for the very first show this Friday!  That’s right, the first DYS podcast goes on the air this Friday!

Post your questions for Gavin and Moneybagguns in the comments below and then join us on Friday.  You just thought DYS was good, we’re about to give you to a whole new way to get informed, get bad, and get to Dominating.

Get those questions in now and we look forward to meeting you back here Friday for the first weekly edition of the DYS podcast show.  Gavin and Moneybaggins have also been kind enough to introduce themselves for you!  Just click the play below to listen right now.

 

 The Domination Podcast Preview Episode [6:05m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

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54 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

On September 18th, Blizzard announced the release date for WotLK.  We made sure that every one of you knew that and even hinted that we were working on a special deal for you.  We know it’s been a bit longer than we all would have liked, but your chance to grab the expansion pack has finally come.

Not only have we arranged special pricing, we’re also going to let you in on a little secret we’ve been using for more than a year now when it comes to WoW.  Gavin, Lawbringer, and several of our other writers all have multiple accounts, and we know a lot of you do as well.  The real pain in starting a new account is getting all the keys you need, but those days are over, and you won’t have to pay Blizz prices ever again.

So where do we get our CD Keys? Off Gamers.  OffGamers has been supplying a wide variety of products to the MMORPG gaming world since 2001.  Now, they’ve got more than 70 game titles and 6 years of excellent customer service record under their belts.  They are the best at what they do, and our favorite is game keys.

(Ed. note: While we buy our CD keys from Offgamers, we do not condone, endorse, or recommend that you EVER buy gold or items from ANY online source, including OffGamers. This violates Blizzard’s TOS and will get you banned.)

To start a new account you would normally have to go buy a boxed set or purchase your keys from Blizz at the WoW website.  But we just hate paying retail for keys.  For the last year, Lawbringer and other staff members have been relying on OffGamers for their WoW keys.  There are several sweet advantages to this.

First, by purchasing your keys from OffGamers, you will get them at a discount.  When you’ve made as many account as we have, saving close to 10 bucks on just getting your keys is really nice.  Normally it would cost you $19.99 for your regular WoW key, and $29.99 for the BC key.  (Thinking into the future any new accounts created after WotLK would also need a WotLK key, probably another $39.99.)  That’s almost $50 bucks right now to start a new account you can actually use for RaF or anything very useful.

If you were to get those same keys from OffGamers you could nab the regular WoW key for just $18.03 and the BC key for $22.59 for a total of just $40.62!  We’ve saved enough in CD key fees by buying them from Offgamers to basically make another account for free compared to what we would have paid Blizz.

The other cool thing is that even though you could get your keys for lower prices by buying discounted box sets, you would also have to pay for shipping and then wait for them to arrive.  That’s for the birds, we live in an instant world and I want my stuff now.  Offgamers offers the same instant key delivery right to your email for free.

Next, you can get 60 day time cards for just $26.93, which is a discount of 2 bucks a month off of your recurring fees.  Since I have 4 accounts (I know it’s ridiculous) the time cards save me almost $10 bucks a month - that’s $120 a year!

But it doesn’t end there.  We have also negotiated with OffGamers to offer you 5% off every WoW purchase you make at their sit.  That means not only WotLK keys, but also your regular keys and time cards as well.

Now, we are especially excited about using OffGamers for WotLK.  At precisely midnight on November 14th we will all be getting our WoW keys and downloading the expansion instantly.  No waiting in line at the store to grab a boxed set and then having to drive home to install the thing from disk.  No waiting for the mail to come later that day - we’ll be some of the very first to take our toons to Northrend and begin our Domination of the expansion 12-18 hours before everyone else!

It’s a much better way to get WotLK.  You could be the first to level 80.  By the time everyone else even logs in, you can be rocking your way toward 73!  For us, there is simply no other way to get cd keys, and when it comes to the WotLK it gives us a Dominating advantage over everyone else, plus we get a nifty discount to boot!

By using the links we’ve made below, you can pre-order your WotLK keys right this minute, and have them in your mailbox the minute the expansion goes live.  By using the special Dominate Your Server discount code, you will get an even better deal!

The Special Discount Code is - DYS092008

Using the links below for US and EU WotLK pre-orders and entering the code above will get you the US version of WotLK for just $36.85, and the EU version for a mere $46.07!  That’s 3 and 4 bucks off (respectively) of the retail prices, and still no shipping fees and instant key delivery on xpac release day.  Now that’s a great deal!

Reserve Your WotLK Key Right Now Using The Links Below

Now you can understand why we took the time to help those of you with download issues to get those matters cleaned up right away.  You sure don’t want to be waiting 9 hours for your WotLK copy to download, although we can’t help you much if you are on a bad connection.  We just can’t fix everything!

One little housekeeping note here.  By ordering today, you will have plenty of time to take care of any purchase verification details.  With your first order from OffGamers, one of their customer service reps will need to contact you for verification purposes.  It’s industry standard practice and means that OffGamers takes every necessary step to protect themselves from thieves.  It really makes me feel all warm and gushy.  By reducing fraud, they can keep their prices low which is always a plus in my book.  But you don’t want to dilly-dally and wait until the 13th.  Get your order and verification done right away so there’s nothing standing in the way of your instant keys and downloads on the 14th.

There’s only one catch in this whole thing.  For those of you who live in countries outside of the US or Europe, you’ll have to be sure that you play on a US or EU server.  From what we understand, servers are linked to regions, and there will be no keys available for servers on the 14th other than US and EU.  We certainly wanted to be able to cater to every single one of you, and we tried, but you’ll just have to blame it on Blizz.  There is simply nothing we can do about it.  (If anyone knows of any tips on this please comment below). With that being said, you can live anywhere in the world and use the keys from OffGamers on any account that plays on a US or EU server.

Another Option For The Worry Warts

Now, if you somehow just feel the undeniable urge to wait for the mail to run, you simply cannot live without the disk (WotLK will only ship on DVD - just so you know) or if you can’t quite bring yourself to use Offgamers for whatever reason, we’ve also included the links to get WotLK from Amazon as well.  Amazon is doing release day shipping, which means you will get it as soon as your UPS guy can ring your doorbell on the 14th.

Amazon is also one of the few places where you can reasonably hope to get the collector’s edition.  Currently the collector’s set is sold out, but amazon will be one of the few sources that might get more.  Also, this only applies to US customers, so even the Europe folks will have to find another vendor.  The Collector’s edition comes with some pretty sweet additions over the regular boxed set including a pet.  If you are vanity oriented, you might consider grabbing one if you get lucky enough to be around if they get a few more.

Regardless of which method you choose, we certainly hope you’ll take advantage of getting your pre-order done right away.  We’ve got a lot more to tell you over the next few weeks about WotLK and you’re not going to want to waste a minute of play time in your quest to really Dominate!

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89 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Word Finally got around about Inscription it seems.  I was doing a few final preparations for completely Dominating the inscription market last night (this morning, whenever - I’m not getting nearly enough sleep) on my banker.

Moneybaggins was browsing through the herb market just like he has been for weeks looking to pick up another couple dozen stacks of herbs, but the market has already gone rock hard.  It may just be an anomaly, but that is highly unlikely considering the hubbub that’s been taking place in every single forum you can think of.

You can see in the screen shot above that prices have gone even higher already than I expected.  I predicted a 300% increase, but six pages of herbs are averaging well over 500% increase in the last 24 hours alone.  Who can say what’s going to happen after the patch goes live?

What does this mean for you?  While Gavin and I put the finishing touches on Inscription the only thing we can all do is really sit back and wait a few more days.  Unconfirmed sources on the PTR say that patch 3.0.2 will go live with Tuesday updates on the 14th, although it could be just next Tuesday on the 7th.  Frankly we are hoping for an extra week.

But I have a couple of tips for all of you in the meantime.  First, for those of you who have been savagely hoarding herbs for weeks, be sure to run scans with AADV every day.  This is a must.  (And don’t make me get on my soapbox AGAIN about that one :)  )  Next, return to the article we did about LilSparky’s workshop if you haven’t already and get familiar with the interface and using that one.

Personally, if you don’t plan on doing Inscription (which is a HUGE mistake) you might start to trickle herbs onto the market now a few 5 stacks at a time at ridiculous prices.  This will help inflate things a bit even before the patch goes in and demand goes nutsoid.

Save the vast majority of your herbs until Thursday if you can stand it, and don’t flood them all into the ah at the same time.  If you’ve got 200 stacks of herbs, put about 5 a day into the market now at something like 5 to 10 times more than you bought them for.  They probably wont sell yet, but it will cause the lift you’re looking for.  People are Lemmings for the most part, and they like to play follow the leader.

Wait at least 24 hours after the patch and then start popping the rest of your flowers on the AH no more than 20 stacks at a time.  Try to stay at about 95% of the AADV market value if you can.  This may mean wiping your data and starting fresh (although it hurts my teeth to say that).  It would be better to keep your historical data, however, and just do a little manual browsing to look at the market rates as they go up.

If you can average a 300% markup and sell out everything you’ve got it would turn 5,000 gold worth of herbs into 15,000 gold.  Plus, you should be able to make that run in about a week.  To date, I’ve bought and/or farmed roughly 550 full stacks of herbs of all the various levels.

But not a single leaf is going on the AH.  I got plans for those little piles of plants, and selling them isn’t one of them.  But if you’re just about feeding your herbs back into the market for a good profit that’s just fine.  It’s not the best way to go, but you WILL make a lot of gold that way.  I just thought I would let you all know that the herb rush is on in my main server, and I expect it’s that way on almost all the others.  If not, it will be very soon.

And don’t worry, we’ll tell you what to REALLY do with all that stuff very soon.  Until then, grab every herb that any noob is selling for a decent price and get ready to Dominate!

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37 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

You’re going to get to play with some of the WotLK changes sooner than you think.  For those of you who have been saving up those herbs, your time to profit is almost here.  The public test realm using patch 3.0.2 went live on the PTR Tuesday, which means that the next major patch is just around the corner.

If you don’t read the patch notes, understand that this patch contains so many huge changes that it’s almost an expansion.  Blizzard is going to implement a lot of the changes in WotLK in this patch.  You are going to get all of your training points back since every class has a list of dozens of significant redos.

As a result, there is just no way to comment on all of the class changes at one time.  Even if we broke it down by class it’s going to take a lot of testing and several articles, but you know we’ll get it up here as we play through the new changes.  But there are some things we wanted to cover today, since they apply to everyone.

First, Inscription is going live in this patch to level 375.  That means all your herbs are worth a ton of gold and glyphs are going to be available.  I will try to make sure I get an inscription leveling guide up as soon as I am confident about the progression to 375.  I’ve got a lot of herbs to gather!  You herbalists can expect your services to be in wild demand, so I sure hope you took our advice and powerleveled that profession.

The achievement system will also be implemented.  This interesting panel tracks a whole slew of things you do in the game and represents another kind of ‘ding’ as you accomplish all sorts of things.  There are 749 achievements available in the beta as of today, so if you ever get bored you still have plenty to work on.  A funny one is Friend or Fowl, which requires you to kill 15 turkeys in 3 minutes.

Speaking of achievements, be sure to attend the Pirate’s Day event in Booty Bay on the 19th.  This one time, one day event is sure to land in the world event section of the achievements list so go check it out.

Since I’ve been playing a priest recently (and now have the entire epic PvP honor gear set from all that work) perhaps the most significant changes in the next patch are for casters.  My favorite change has to do with spell cast timer pushbacks and channeling interrupts.

This is going to be a big help for casters vs. mele classes.  The patch notes state that when attempting to cast a spell, the first and second hits will only add .5 seconds to the cast time, and further hits will have no effect!  No more looking at my cast bar and seeing +2.7 sec because some hunter keeps using his instant cast shots on me.  This works nearly the same way for channeled spells in that the first two hits reduce the channeling time by 25%, and further hits have no effect.

Now certainly this doesn’t apply to things that completely interrupt casting like silence, silencing shot, earth shock, shield bash and all those things that just stop casting completely.  But even in PvE, it’s going to make solo survivability for casters a lot easier.  If you’ve ever pulled 4 mobs and not even been able to heal yourself or get a spell of any kind off, this will really be a welcome change.

Next, anything that grants +spell damage or +healing is being consolidated into a single stat called Spell Power.  All gear that grants +healing or +spell damage will now reflect the one stat +spell power.  As a result, your visible bonus healing for healing classes will appear lower, but healing spells will gain more from spell power than damage spells so the net result will be the same.

This is an interesting change that will make gear more usable for all casting classes regardless of whether they are helaers or not.  Healers will always get a bigger buff to their healing spells from spell power, so stacking all that +heal gear will be a thing of the past and respeccing to a damage build will not require a major gear change.

On a lighter note, you will also be able to visit Stormwind harbor, which is pretty impressive.  You can also go see the huge hole in the ground where the purple Dalaran bubble used to be.  Dalaran has already been moved to Northrend as the Kirin Tor make their move.  It turns out that the bubble was more of a complete sphere, so the big hole in the ground might be worth a look.

You will also be able to visit the new barber shops and change the look of your toon if you like.  It seems that they have introduced some new hairstyles for each race, and you can also change your hair color and a few other thing if you like.

And last, but certainly not least the 51 point talent trees will open up as well.  You are going to have new skills to train based on your talents if you so choose, and that means that you’ll have a gob of new tricks to play with.  You can find a link to the patch notes as well as a talent calculator below so you can read about each class and then fiddle with the new talents in the next few days so you have some idea of what you want to try out.

This is a big patch for WoW, and you’re going to love all the changes (although there iwll be some initial balance issues that will need to be played through and worked on).  So check out the patch notes for yourself, work with the talent trees and get those herbs harvested/bought and ready to sell!  Oh, and go hang out with the pirates too - this patch is really going to Dominate!

Patch Notes

http://www.worldofwarcraft.com/patchnotes/test-realm-patchnotes.html

New Talent Trees

http://wotlk.wowhead.com/?talent

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23 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Last night, Blizzard announced the release date for Wrath of the Lich King.  I hope you are ready, because it’s coming sooner than any of us expected here at DYS.  I know you’re itching to know the date, but you’re going to have to pardon me a little hype and buildup here.

While the Beta has been frustrating at times (you notice I didn’t have a picture up for the article about WotLK pets because the new pet classes in the Beta have been bugged for the last 5 days :(  )  it is also the most fun I’ve had with WoW.  Before tBC, everyone had pretty much capped out on the available adventuring, and once that happens the game sort of gets a bit dull because there is nowhere to go that’s new, and nothing really fun to do because you’ve done it all.

The Burning Crusade expansion fed a lot of new and neat things into the game.  You may be taking them all for granted now, but tBC was an awesome expansion to an already good game.  With tBC we got flying mounts, a really well planned continent, dozens of new factions, and cool new mini-games within the game like the daily bombing runs.  All of this added up to a much more interesting and fun experience, even for those people who had completely mastered the original content.

If you thought that tBC was a good expansion, just wait until you see WotLK.  We haven’t written a whole lot about it so far because so much of the new content is in a state of flux.  We just don’t like to post information that turns out to be bogus later on.  You guys expect a certain level of perfection with every single article we post, and (even if you don’t believe it all the time) we really want to deliver above and beyond your expectations.  We truly want everyone to be able to find something in everything we write about or recommend that will help you Dominate.  You may not always agree, but we simply can’t win them all.

Well, the WotLK is dominating.  The first thing that strikes me about the continent of Northrend is that the graphics seem to be better.  Not to sound girly, but it is pretty.  It has such an epic feel and look in every single zone.  It’s not ‘cartoony’ in any way.  Instead it looks like something from a Conan the Barbarian movie.  It’s really visually awesome.

Next, there are some nifty changes to the quest environment.  There is a good flow to everything, but yet still enough different things to do in so many places that it will take you quite a few run-throughs before you start getting bored with the quest chains.  It’s not just - go here, kill this and the odd escort thrown in.  You still have to kill a bazillion things, but you also get to blow up buildings, ride in tanks, borrow dragons - and that’s just in the first level or two.

There are a whole new slew of factions with great rewards, a new profession, glyphs, a whole zone dedicated to constant and total PvP action (think battleground just bigger and no queue), new pets, new talents, new instances, the achievement system, the whole thing is just incredible.

Then there are the class talent changes and additions.  Probably every warrior is going to at least try out Titans Grip, a skill that lets you use two handed weapons in each hand.  It is awesome to see those guys running around with a monster axe in both fists.  So there will be things that nearly everyone tries out in the new trees, and you can be sure that we will give you all the inside scoop on what really works and what is just fluff as we test through all the possibilities in the coming months.

So are you ready for it?  Well, you better get that way pretty quick, because the

WotLK goes live on November 13th!

Which means you need to pre-order pretty soon to ensure you get your copy on time.  If you want to be one of the first guys to hit 80, and have your inscription at 450 in the first few days, rest assured that our leveling guide will send you screaming through Northrend in record time - Dominating everyone else.  We’ll keep you ahead of the learning curve with all the information you need to continue your domination of PvE, PvP, professions, recipes, glyphs, inscription, faction rep, progression, raiding and much, much more in the coming days and weeks even before WotLK debuts on Nov 13th.  But all of that will do you no good at all if you don’t have it to play!

But before you run out and order a copy at the store or hit Amazon to do it online, just know that we are working feverishly to get a special offer for all of you from one of the top online game retailers.  So if you can wait a couple of days we’ll give you a way to pre-order the game that will give you your game key as soon as the WotLK goes live on midnight of the 13th.  You’ll also be able to download the new version without having to wait for your disks to arrive or even wait in line at the store, nothing could be easier.  It will also put you in a position to pop a couple of levels before most people even put their disks in the drive!

So you better get seriously busy whacking out the last few levels to 70 on those alts in the next few weeks, and be sure to check out our WotLK information as we leak it to you here.  We want to take your game to a whole new level in the expansion, and we’re going to help you beat everyone else to the punch.  Look for our special DYS pre-order deal in the next couple of days - and as always, Dominate!

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37 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

We really do a lot of research when writing articles here at DYS.  Sometimes the information we would like to add to an article just doesn’t exist, which means that the facts have to come from in-game analysis.  As you can probably figure, that can take a lot of time.

I recently had the idea based on a comment on the article about how soon will you be replacing gear after WotLK on a peice about farming honor gear.  It turns out there really isn’t a succinct guide for that anywhere so I have been forced to grind it out myself to put it into a readable and reasonably usable formulation for our readers.  And it’s going to take me a month of working at it a few hours a day.  You see, I just won’t put anything up here unless I’m certain that it is as factual and accurate as I can possibly make it before you read it.

In this vein, there used to be a really neat tool at Alakazam where you could look at all the different builds for all the classes and see what was the most popular.  When they changed their site format it just dissapeared, completely killing a terrific article I had already written.  Since that time, I have been searching for something that gives the same info, but to no avail.  However, I found something that comes pretty close.

So today I just wanted to introduce you to a neat little blog site you’ve probably never heard of.  I found it while browsing through the Wow wiki via a relatively obscure link on a build page, and it has maybe 90% of the info I used to use.  It may come in handy from time to time for you if you like big lists of facts like I do.

The site is Armory Musings and can be found at this address: http://okoloth.blogspot.com/ This guy has written a spider script that mines information from the WoW armory, and it can really show you some nifty stats on just about everything you could ever want to know about what players really use in the game.

On the first page, you will see a series of updates (with a LOT of scrolling) that show the balance of characters on every single realm by class.  While interesting, it’s not all that useful most of the time.  The real data is in the specific class links at the top of the page.

You can click on any of the class names here to take you to a class-specific page with a whole lot of useful data on your class of choice.  Let’s look at some of the information on the druid page.

You will see that he will break down the entire class by spec, and even give you the average stats that each spec has.  It should give you an idea how you rank according to the overall averages for your class at level 70.

Next, he shows you some averages for some other specific information from the character pane including mele, defense and spell stats so you can see how your toon stacks up against all the other 70’s on all realms.  He even has stats for the most popular professions and even profession combinations for all the classes listed.

But the part I really thought was cool was the next, and largest section.  The big list will show you the top 5 gear choices for all level 70’s broken down by builds.  He has even included the wowhead tooltip so you can hover each one and get the game tooltip, or you can click the link to go to wowhead and figure out where to go and get all this great loot.

Wondering what your Balance druid should be wearing on your wrist? Here is what the data says:

14% [Bracers of the White Stag]

followed by:

10% [Shattrath Wraps]
9% [Windhawk Bracers]
5% [Veteran's Wyrmhide Bracers]
5% [Mana Infused Wristguards]

So you can look at the choices thousands of other druids have made to determine what is easiest to get, and what may just be by far the best choice.  You can see that this might be extremely useful if this is an alt, or if you just haven’t played long enough to know what all the best gear choices may be.  So both noobs and pros should find this information really valuable.  (You’ll have to excuse me if I didn’t include all the HTML for the tooltips and links - that’s why I’m pointing you to the site!)

And if you’ve ever wondered exactly what gems you should be putting in all those sockets, there’s even a breakdown of the 5 most popular gem choices, which I found fascinating as well.

Again, he breaks this down according to base talent builds, which should take any guesswork out of selecting the right gems for your build choice.

Overall, I love the information at armory musings.  There are other things I would like to see added to the data.  And, of course, a blog format makes it pretty difficult to present these types of tables, so the presentation is a little sketchy at times.  But overall it will be a site I visit fairly often when I start working on end-game spec and gear for all those new toons I have hitting 70 with the refer a friend program.  I sure don’t want a pro inspecting my gear and giving me the loser chant.

You should be able to tweak your overall knowledge of any class in the game at armory musings based on great breakdowns of an absolute avalanche of data directly from the armory.  It’s a great resource to use and a tool that just might help you put the final touches on your toon of any class to go Dominate!

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22 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

In preparation for WotLK, you should certainly consider powerleveling herbalism.  For at least the first few months, herbs are going to be selling like hotcakes at the AH, and as of now we really can’t tell which particular flavors are going to be the biggest sellers.

We already recommended that you start buying up all of the herbs you can get your hands on at the AH and then sitting on them until the xpac, but those will be gone in very short order no matter how many of them you are able to collect now.

The only way to make sure that you can make the big bucks long after the initial push, and especially after prices stabilize is to add herbalism to one of your toons, or at least max out that skill just in case.

Now, I normally don’t go in for farming much, but there may be so much gold to be made with this one that it will actually make it worth your while for a few months.  I still keep one toon around with mining as a profession feed, and you may want to do the same with herbalism.

So overall this is going to be pretty short and sweet. What we’re going to try to do is give you the best areas for major Herb farming. This will be especially helpful if you’ve picked up herbalism as a higher level character and need to rush back through the lower levels in newbie zones.

As you go through this guide, remember that when doing circuits of an area, try to travel in a zigzag pattern. The more of an area you cover, the better your farming will be overall. Also, when you get to the higher level herbs, don’t skip the lower level stuff just because you don’t get skill ups for it. Part of the way nodes spawn is related to how many empty nodes there are in the area. The more nodes you pick, the more new nodes will spawn in the general area. You can actually speed things up by picking everything that pops up on your map. Besides, you can either sell the mats you don’t need at the ah or turn them into potions to use or sell if you are doing Alchemy.

1 – 50: Silverleaf and Peacebloom

• Alliance:
  • Dolanaar
  • Dun Murogh
  • Elwynn Forrest
  • Azuremyst Isle
• Horde:
  • Mulgore
  • Tirisfal Glades
  • Eversong Woods
  • Durotar

51 – 70: Mageroyal & Earthroot

• Alliance
  • Westfall Coast
  • Gol’Bolar Quarry, Dun Morogh
• Horde
  • Northwest Badlands

71 – 100: Briarthorn

• Alliance
  • Darkshore
  • Twilight Grove, Duskwood
  • Eastern shore of Loch Modan
  • Lakeshire, Redridge Mountains
• Horde
  • All of Northern Barrens
  • Southern Silverpine Forrest

101 – 115: Bruiseweed

• Alliance
  • Western Ashenvale
  • East of Loch Modan
  • Stonewatch Keep, Redridge Mountains
• Horde
  • Ramparts North to Splintertree post in Ashenvale
  • Stonetalon Mountains
  • Southern Barrens

116 – 125: Wild Steelbloom

• Alliance
  • Stonetalon Peak
• Horde
  • Southern Barrens
  • From Great Lift to Highperch in Thousand Needles
• Both
  • Outer edges of Arathi Highlands
  • Nek’mani Wellspring in Stranglethorn Vale
  • Zuuldaia Ruins, Stranglethorn Vale

By this time, both Alliance and Horde will be farming similar areas, so we’ll just lump them all together and you can look for herbs as you travel. Also, the higher levels have more scattered spawn points, so you’ll need to do complete circuits of each of these areas to find all the nodes.

126 – 160: Kingsblood

• Ashenvale
• Charred Vale, Stonetalon Mountains
• Wetlands
• Hillsbrad Foothills
• Misty Reed Swamp, Swamp of Sorrows

161 – 185: Fadeleaf

• Swamp of Sorrows

186 – 205: Khadgar’s Whisker

• Hinterlands
• Eastern Arathi Highlands
• Swamp of Sorrows

206 – 230: Firebloom

• Searing Gorge
• Blasted Lands
• Tanaris

231 – 250: Sungrass

• Felwood
• Feralas
• Forlorn Ridge, Azshara

251 – 270: Gromsblood

• Felwood
• Mannoroc Coven, Desolace
• Blasted Lands

271 – 290: Dreamfoil

• Un’Goro Crater
• Azshara

290 – 300: Plaguebloom

• Western Plaguelands
• Eastern Plaguelands

300 – 330: Felwood

331 – 350+: Zangarmarsh

350 – 375: Shadowmoon, or continue Zangarmarsh

As a level 70, you could easily do this in just a few hours. Also, if you are power leveling, be sure to watch where the herbs overlap, you could very easily go from 225 – 350 in Felwood alone, and maybe pick up a few Felcloth while you’re at it. Zangarmarsh is also just packed with herbs, so once you get there, there’s no real reason to leave, unless you just get bored of looking at giant mushrooms.

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22 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

Not too long ago, it was saying something pretty impressive if you had a level 70 of every class.  But now, anyone can have 10 toons at 70 with a lot less sweat.  Really, you can reasonably develop 10-12 level 70 characters in less time than you can possibly imagine.  It’s so easy, and I’m kicking myself for not seeing it sooner.  But I really can’t be too hard on myself since this wasn’t even possible until about a month ago when Blizz introduced the Refer-a-Friend program.

We did an article about that, but I just didn’t look into it all that much at the time.  You see, I already have 3 accounts and several 70’s so I just didn’t see what a big benefit it was until a couple of days ago.  So stop whatever you are doing with your toons and read this very carefully before you do another minute of leveling.

My wife and I are working on several sets of toons in preparation for the expansion.  I certainly wanted to have one of each class at 70 ready to take into the new content so that I wasn’t stuck having to push several classes all the way from level 1-80.  That just doesn’t sound like a good time.

Based on our beta testing, you could also stop at level 68 and do just fine in WotLK if you wanted to.  I took my shadow priest to Northrend at 68 with middlin gear and it was no sweat.  So if you could just get a full set of toons to level 68 you could have a good jump start on most folks.

But leveling 4 sets of 2 plus one just doesn’t sound like fun to me - or probably anyone else.  Especially if you are relatively new to the game, this can seem like a simply impossible task.  But with the RaF (refer a friend) in effect, you will just not believe how easy it can be.

I’m even going to approach this from the perspective of “you don’t even have any friends who play.”  You don’t have to actually refer a new person to the game.  I referred myself using the RaF link and started a new account that linked to one of my old accounts.  I even transferred several toons from another account to the new referral account!  It’s just like starting any new account, but you get all the experience buffs and other benefits to go with it.  It’s just too easy to pass up.

So I put it to the test a bit yesterday.  Triple experience is something you just have to see for yourself to believe.  In one session at level 30, my wife and I completed 8 quests in Thousand Needles.  Those 8 quests would normally take you from halfway through level 29 to just about level 30.  But by the time we had done those (total played time about 45 minutes) we had both dinged 32 and were over 50% to 33.  It’s just stupid fast.

So that made me put pen to paper on the other big benefit from the RaF deal.  For every 2 levels you gain on your RaF account, you can give 1 free level-up to a toon on your Main account.  That means each toon that hits level 60 has 30 levels to grant to another toon under level 60.

From what I can tell so far, when playing with two linked accounts, you should reasonably be able to hit 60 in half the time it would normally take you to do it solo.  So if you are smart about it, you can have 4 level 60’s (2 on the referred account and 2 on the main account) in the same amount of time it would take you to hit 60 on one toon by yourself.

At the end of that period of time, your 2 level 60 toons on the RAF account would have 60 free levels to give!  So you just pop a new toon onto your main account, meet your RAF toons and BOOM - one free toon at 60 with ZERO days played time.

Well, that was so easy, let’s just lather, rinse and repeat.  Push another two toons to 60, and get another free 60.  By this time you have 10 level 60 toons ready to go into outlands whenever you like.  That’s one of each class, plus an extra paladin or something so you don’t have to worry about respeccing him all the time.

If you are working on your first 70, you can just start another account and whack out one of every other class faster than it took you to hit 70 the first time.  It’s really unbelievable how well this works.

If you are even just a little smarter, you can figure out how to actually hit 60 on 4 of those toons and only have to play 50 levels.  Play the toons that are going to get the “Free” levels up to level 10, and there’s 20 other free levels to give to the “main” toons.  If you play the RaF toons to level 5 before you begin the main toons, and save the free level ups until later, you will only have to play your main toons to about level 54 or so and then just ding them to 60.

And check this out for another nifty little time-saver.  I have grown to prefer the Blood-elf starting area up to level 20.  But if I want a Tauren druid, that means a hideous run that takes about 20 minutes.  Not with RaF.  I can just start a Blood Elf Toon, pop my new Tauren in the game, have the Blood Elf invite the Tauren to a group, and then summon them to Sunstrider Isle in 5 seconds.  No fuss, no muss - it’s brilliant.

If your computer can handle it, you can just double box this the whole way.  Just log into both accounts, set one toon to follow and then minimize so it doesn’t chew up your graphics processing power.  You can play both toons all by yourself and still get the triple experience.  That also means you can skip all of the quests where you have to gather 10 of something and only do the ones where you kill 10 of whatever mobs.  This way, you’re not having to switch back and forth to loot drops between screens.

So, the way to take maximum advantage of the RAF program is to create the new account with the instructions at the wow website.  Activate the account to full BC status and then get to work.  Run two toons on your main account to level 10 and then just let them sit.  Run 4 toons on your RaF account to level 4 and then double box (or actually play with a friend on your main or RaF account) with the toons on your main account.  Just save all the free level-ups until you hit 60 on your RaF toons, and then pop everything else on your main to 60.

It’s sweet, sweet, sweet.  Use the RaF program to build all those toons you’ve always wanted, and when the WotLK comes out - you’ll be ready to REALLY Dominate - with any class you like.  Good luck, and we’ll see you in Northrend!

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60 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

What a difference a day makes.  Thursday evening, I was rocking along with my Battleground runs and getting ready to work with Gavin on some other character testing in the Beta when a nice little storm blew in.  One bad lightning strike later and I was dead in the water.  My hard drive was fried.  So there I sat trying to figure out some way to salvage not only the evening, but also nearly 6 months worth of work.

You see, I had made the mistake of not backing up all of the articles, ebooks and guides I had written.  Like a dummy I had succumbed to this strange notion windows has of putting everything in the My Documents folder.  I long ago got tired of fighting the ghost of Wild Bill Gates and just let it do whatever it wanted.  Big mistake.

Needless to say, when you are looking at the blue screen of death and know that somewhere on your hard drive is nearly 1,000 hours of work that would be virtually impossible to duplicate your pucker factor increases into the millions.  After fiddling with the recovery console for about 12 hours I was finally able to fix the master boot record of the hard drive and get back to ground zero, but I really thought I was looking at a couple thousand dollars in data recovery fees.  Just goes to show you what a little frantic Googling can do for you.

The whole ordeal taught me a few valuable lessons, and something about WoW that might come in handy for all of you at some point in time.  But let’s cover the just plain computer “don’t let this happen to you” stuff very quickly.  If you never felt the need to use a UPS (Uninterrupted Power Supply) and a decent backup program, get both right this second.  You can find backup utilities for free, or if you prefer something really slick you can always use Acronis.

Seriously, even if you don’t think you have anything you can’t afford to lose on your computer, you’re probably fooling yourself.  At the very minimum, get another hard drive and at least save your contact lists, music, and the other stuff you use all the time to the alternate drive at least once a month.  You don’t really even need a backup program, they just make it easier.

Anyway, on to the WoW issue.  I HAD saved WoW on one of my SATA drives, so at least I didn’t have to go through a bagillion hours of downloading the whole thing from scratch.  But since I didn’t have another computer that could run the SATA drive I only had one option left - my wife’s laptop.

No problem, i figured.  She uses all the same mods and a Fang gamepad just like I do, so I can just pop on and keep up the BG runs.  Well, not so much.  I had failed to remember that we had only set up HER account to mirror mine, but when I logged into MY accounts on her machine, it was just a mess.

Nothing was in the right place, the keybindings were nonexistent, all the bars and mods were in all the wrong places - it was basically impossible to play and do much of anything except run around.  Well, I’m not one of those honor mooches, so I didn’t saddle my team with a total loser that couldn’t contribute.  Since I was already nearly screaming over losing everything on my machine, I sure didn’t feel like spending an hour getting everything right from scratch on her machine just to run a few AV’s.

But there is an easy way to do just that.  I have a little USB drive so today I popped it in and copied a few things from MY WoW folder to it and in about two minutes I had everything set up on that laptop to run exactly the way it does on my machine.  It’s really simple if you know what to copy, and I’m about to show you what files to grab so that you can make WoW work on any machine that has WoW installed without ever missing a beat.

Here’s a screenshot from inside my WoW folder.  The two folders we will be working with are the Interface folder and the WTF folder.  Real simple with the Interface - if you want to copy all your addons to another computer just copy the entire folder.  We have to root around in the WTF just a bit.

Inside WTF you will find two things, a folder named Account, and a file named Config.  Open the Account File and you should see a folder for each one of your WoW accounts.  At this point all you have to do is copy each account file you want to put on the new machine.  Since that’s just almost too easy, let’s take it a step further.

If you ever run into a situation where something tragic happens (like it did to me) and you need to repair something one realm at a time you can also copy settings from one realm to another within each account.  Inside each account folder, you will see something like this:

On this account, I only have toons on the Fenris realm, but if I had toons on more than one realm, then you would also have a folder for each realm.  Certain settings are saved by realm, so if you’ve been playing for months on one realm and have everything just the way you like it, you can also transfer all of those settings to toons on a new realm without having to go through the process of doing it all manually in-game.  This is especially handy if you transfer a toon to another realm or account.

From the account folder, just copy the bindings-cache, Saved Variables folder and SavedVariables.LUA files if you need to put them on another account.  (There are two SavedVariables files shown here, but one is a BAK or backup file, WoW will automatically create a new one so there’s no need to copy that one)

When you open the realm folder, in this case Fenris, you will see a folder for every character on that realm (and even for toons you used to have that you may have deleted - just can delete those if you like to cut down on clutter).  To copy settings specific for one toon to another toon, just copy everything INSIDE one of those toon folders and paste it to the new toon folder on any account or realm.

So to recap here in case I lost anyone.  To move ALL of you settings to another machine, copy the Interface folder and paste it to the WoW folder on the new machine.  (If someone is using a different set of mods on the other machine that they want to keep, be sure to copy THEIR Interface folder first and put it somewhere they can find to replace your copy with theirs again later).  Then in the \World of Wacraft\WTF\Account folder, copy any account folders and paste those into the WTF folder on the new machine.

If you need to copy settings to another account folder on your own machine for whatever reason, the files to copy from the \WTF\Account\*ACCOUNT NAME*\*Realm Name* are:

1. Saved Variables Folder

2. SavedVariables.LUA

3. bindings-cache

4. Entire contents from inside \WTF\Account\*ACCOUNT NAME*\*Realm Name*\*Toon Name*

So to copy the settings for your Toon “Ubergoober” on the “Flobbit” realm on your account “Dominators” you would click the WTF folder, the Account folder, the Dominators folder and from there copy the first three files listed above.  Then you would click the Flobbit folder and finally click the Ubergoober folder and copy everything in that folder.  Once you have all the files, you would reverse that process to add those settings to another toon on any account or realm you like.

It would be pretty neat to have a little program to automate this process, but I doubt I can talk Gavin into writing the thing - it’s not like we don’t have enough to do already.  It’s not really complicated once you know what to copy from which folders, and you can always come back to this article as a referrence.

So in the end, my (near) loss made me take a close look at exactly how to move my settings, and now you know how to do it too.  Good luck, and may lightening NEVER Dominate YOUR hard drive!

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16 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post

I’ve spent the vast majority of my WoW experience doing PvE.  To be completely honest, I’ve never really liked PvP.  For those of you who are Blizz fans, it all started in D2.  I was a huge Diablo fan, but PvP just escaped me.  I had a whole pile of 90’s and did maybe a billion solo hell Baal runs, so I knew what I was doing - I just didn’t enjoy all the crud that comes with PvP.

It takes a certain mentality to really enjoy killing people.  Mobs are one thing, fighting another human being is quite another.  Maybe I’m just not the ruthless type.  Although you would think if you can learn how to do one really well, then why would the other be tough?  Well, I finally decided that it was a huge hole in my game and it had to be fixed.  Oh, and it was making Gavin mad that I sucked at it.

So for those of you who are pros at PvP this may be a little boring and you might want to move on to another post.  But we all had to start somewhere with everything and you might actually find a bit of humor here if you can cast your mind back to when you were just beginning your PvP experience.  Plus, you might actually be able to help those people who are just starting out by adding comments on the beginner bits instead of doing what most good PvPer’s do - laugh at people.

That one thing - the punk factor, kept me out of PvP.  I simply hate being laughed at, spit on, and all of the other ego trip idiot things people do when they win.  More than likely they are losers who never won at anything else in their lives so they feel some uncontrollable urge to rub it in when they actually succeed at something.

As a result, PvP can be pretty intimidating at first.  So these observations may be just the boost you need to get started if you’ve been putting it off and “concentrating” on your raiding or leveling.  Well don’t wait any longer, you’ve got to just jump into the fray and take your lumps as a rookie.

Right off the bat, understand that you’re going to have to grow a little thicker skin to be able to swallow PvP, especially at first.  The jerk factor doesn’t stop with the guys on the other side.  You’re going to be the victim of a fair amount of ridicule from members of your own teams as well.  Which is a real shame.  No one actually knows how to play team sports any more.

So you’re really going into Battlegrounds and world raids with a bunch of individuals doing their own thing.  Because of that, sometimes you’re going to lose even though you could have won, and all those individuals are going to blame each other, and you, and your mom, and your sister and anyone, in fact, but themselves.  If they are so smart, why aren’t they organizing pre-mades?  Oh well, you just have to live with it.

You’re also going to feel virtually naked your first few Battlegrounds.  So much of the success quotient in PvP is in your gear.  And you’re not going to have the right kind of gear until you’ve done your share of PvP, so it’s a circular referrence.  How do you get a LOT better in PvP situations?  Get good PvP gear.  How do you get good PvP gear?  Play a lot of PvP.  So you can see you have to go through the rookie blues for a while until you can start collecting some honor gear.

That was the whole point for me in starting my PvP grind - to grab at least the full current set of gear before the WotLK debut.  And I figured it sure wouldn’t hurt me to get a few hundred battlegrounds under my belt to try to get up to speed on the whole concept.  So I hopped in about 50 games last week as a trial by fire.

Despite getting whacked a good number of times by players who simply had more skill and a lot better gear, it’s really not too bad after about the 20th game.  It took me about 5 games to even have an idea what was happening, and then another 5 to figure out what maybe I should be doing besides just tagging along and killing what I could and trying not to just be dumb.  So after 10 games I felt better.

Then I could really try to participate and help do my part to win the matches.  Easier said than done.  My first 20 games on my hunter went really badly because I am simply the wrong spec and forgot to take that into account before I went in.

My Shadow Priest did a whole lot better, even though he just hit 70 and has virtually nothing but crafted gear from tailoring.  I made sure to do a little more research and respec to a PvP friendly build as well.  So I did the full holiday weekend of EOTS games, about 20 in WSG, and a few AB just to check it out.  The encouraging part?  If you’re pretty good at PvE, you can figure out the PvP stuff faster than it looks like those first few games.

You learn pretty quickly which classes are going to give you fits, and you can either avoid them or just know you’re probably about to take a beating.  But that also means that there are some classes you will normally best if you play your cards right and you’ll know how to spot them and hunt them down to take them right out of the fight.

The biggest difference between PvE and PvP is really just the speed of the game.  PvP is really a case of Fast and Furious.  But after a while you will feel yourself getting a LOT quicker with not only your spells and skills, but just moving around the battle fields.  As you process information faster and learn to spot certain things it makes a big difference in how well you will do.

But the real point I wanted to make here (after a little rambling) was that maybe the one thing that will give you some sense of pride as you begin the PvP gear grind is to be a team player.  As I mentioned before, you’re going to be playing with a lot of punks, but that doesn’t excuse you from doing the right thing.  You can often be more valuable to the entire battle not just by whacking people but by doing other, more subtle, things that will not show up in the end-of-battle list of kills and damage/healing done.

Just a “for instance,” as a shadow priest.  Since the SP is not a big killer with a gob of life I can’t really mount a 1 man assault on a captured tower and wait for reinforcements.  But I did find that I could slow down about 4 enemy players chasing a flag carrier.  In that way, just the two of us could do something faster than if we had grouped up five guys to try to take and control the mid field.  When the flag gets picked up, there will often be a big chase scene, and most of the time no one will stop to gank the little SP running along with the group.  So I had the freedom to dot, flay and get some blackouts in on several enemy players, basically letting my flag guy get out scot free.

Now, realize that once the flag got out of reach I was dead meat.  But that’s sometimes the whole point of being a team player.  Go ahead and mount that 2 man assault you know is going to fail if it will buy your team time to grab some other tower.  Run away from situations when you’re going to die anyway and try to get that one druid to chase you to give your group an advantage.  Look for any way you can to create annoyances for the other team and give your team the best shot at winning - even if it means not scoring any personal points in the game.  Take one for the team in other words.  Sometimes you will help more by taking a death and occupying a few enemy toons until reinforcements arrive than if you waited for help first.  While you are waiting they might have time to get a zerg up for one of your towers.

And more than anything, just realize that you’re going to win some, and you’re certainly going to lose some.  You can’t let it make you mad or yell at the other folks in the group.  You’re going to get into those games that are pre-mades for the other faction and you’ll be toast from the start.  When the other team is REALLY a team, you’re going to have a hard time winning as a PUG cluster.

But maybe the best example of how satisfying it can be was an epic comeback I was privileged to be a part of in one EOTS round.  When the bubble dropped, there were only 6 of us in the game.  It was a rout from the very beginning.  At one point, we were down 1,200 to 150.  Then the team numbers rounded out and at full strength, we charged back for the win by just 50 points.  It was one of the most satisfying victories I’ve ever had playing WoW.  Just as good as the first instance Boss drop and definitely as good as that first Gruul or Vashj kill.

Now I can begin to see why people do a lot of PvP.  It can be really fun.  Sure, there is a grind involved - it wouldn’t be fun if it wasn’t difficult in a lot of ways.  So I look forward to having my first full set of PvP gear here in the next few weeks, and seeing just how different it is on the other side of the pile of purples than it was when I started.  I plan on keeping the old gear as a reference point and running a few games with the old gear and then the full set of new gear just to see how big a difference it makes with the same skill set.  Should be a fascinating journey as well.

So, all you folks that have been lolly-gagging around doing all PvE, it’s time to hop into some battlegrounds and get your feet seriously wet.  Or, you can follow me straight off into the deep end.  I guarantee, it won’t be long before you will start to Dominate!

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40 Comments » ~ ~ Random Post